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    February 10

    BECOMING PUPPETEERS

     

    Thylazine: The Australian Journal of Arts, Ethics & Literature                                                                                                                                 #11/thyla11b

      BECOMING PUPPETEERS
    By Julie McNeill

     

     

    I was anxiously awaiting an audience for Jika Jika Puppets from North Fitzroy, Melbourne. They were part of my Youth Arts program for the first Melbourne Fringe Festival that I was a founding member of, and hardly anybody had turned up!

    Summoning courage I went up to the puppeteer, Roy McNeill, who was dressed in black clothes. He eased my feelings of incompetence by saying it was okay, because he was training a puppeteer into the show of The Four Chinese Brothers and they would look at it as a rehearsal.

    A group of young unemployed performers and musicians who had hitched their way up the Nepean Highway from Frankston sat with me, cross-legged on the floor. We were enthralled by the Japanese style Bunraku rod puppets and the way they came to life. The sets were original, incorporating musical instruments within them, like the giant triangle used as a gong.

    Committed to audience participation in all of his shows, Roy inducted us 17-25 year old young punks into the joy and wonder of our basic creative spirits: waving silks, making music and working puppets from the primary school show.

     

    The Asian influences were breaking through to the arts and culture of Australia in 1982. Roy later explained to me when we met again at a Winter Solstice night feast in Brunswick Street a couple of months later, that his experience at Osaka for Expo '70 had changed his artistic vision and direction in life.

    THE APPRENTICE

    Roy trained as a puppeteer with the Marionette Theatre of Australia (M.T.A.), when he was seventeen. His father had read a Melbourne's Age newspaper classified for a young person interested in theatre and wanting to travel. Roy didn't know anything about theatre but he did want to get out of a grim future working as a salesman at McPhersons Hardware.

    Amazingly, he passed the audition where he was asked to work a puppet and carve a pair of hands. He must have shown a natural talent, as well as being young and cheap ... There were not many women employed as they could not carry the large, heavy 'bridge', tracks and set. The one or two women there helped to set up the puppets.

      "We had 3-5 tons of equipment. All the puppets were large, long string marionettes, whose heads were carved by sculptors from which negative moulds were made."

    "The heads were then moulded with Silastic (a glue-impregnated material softened with acetone)," recalls Roy. "They were then covered with a skin made from pearl glue and whitening."

    "These heads were very strong and light. The bodies were from half inch wood padded with flocking and canvas."

    "Joining pieces like hips and waist joined with thick canvas webbing. Elbow and knee joints came from door hinges which had been loosened."

    "The bridge from the ground was about 5 metres high. The puppeteers worked 3 metres up and controlled the puppets on the stage."

    "There was a front stage and back stage with a scrim in between usually with a picture on it which one can see through when the lights were on the back, but appeared solid when the lights were on the front."

    The M.T.A. was part of the Elizabethan Theatre Trust. Under its umbrella were the first flagship companies of the Australian Ballet, Opera and Marionettes. It was a fateful connection because Roy was able to unleash a performance talent and develop into a multi-skilled puppeteer who gained confidence to write, design, build and manipulate puppets.

    For a lad from Leeds who had arrived in Australia in 1964, this was a fabulous opportunity. The shows were accepted with applause around the country, but off-stage, life was risky. In the late 1960's life on the road was often lonely. Roy hadn't quite found his place socially; the rest of the guys were 'gay' but they looked straight with their suits and ties and short haircuts.

    It was Roy who was the odd one out; proud of his long wavy hair and excited by the fashion of the flare and fancy ruffled shirts with costume jewelry, many a Queensland country town male accused him of being a 'poofta'. Not being tolerated, being beaten up regularly, caused an aversion to Queensland and Australia's limited tolerance of difference.

    Fortunately a tour of SE Asia gave him a raison d'être to escape. He got to celebrate his 20th birthday in Osaka, Japan for Expo '70 with two shows, The Magic Pudding - a classic Australian story by Norman Lindsay and Tintookies 2000, a futuristic production that showed the evolution of humankind with lots of peace, love and harmony at the finale.

    This production was innovative as for the first time it left the marionettes behind and the puppeteers worked a variety of styles of rod, glove and hand and mimed rod puppets "It didn't go down well in Australia as everybody wanted the cute little furry creatures on long strings."

    The show was cut from the repertoire and never performed again. "It wasn't given a proper chance" says Roy.

    However, the opportunity to discover a distinctly different culture and form of puppetry gave him the impetus to research the rest of the world's puppetry. He had saved his touring allowance by not eating in the hotels, and it wasn't long before he was on the 'hippie trail', going overland through Asia across to Europe.

    Roy was disappointed. In Sri Lanka the artform was dead, and all of the puppets that he saw, though beautiful and interesting with the different controls, were kept in museums. Though puppetry was a living presence in India it was hard to find as, like the circus, the puppeteers moved from village to village and when he did hear that there were puppets, there was a war that prevented him finding them!

    DOWN AND OUT IN LONDON

    "On arrival in England I saw most of the puppet companies, as I am interested in the different styles of puppetry and was also looking for work", Roy wrote in a letter home to his mum and dad in Highett.

    "I did not find any work as most puppet companies in Britain consist of a hard core of two or three puppeteers, and the rest of the company was made up of out-of-work actors, trying to gain hours on the stage to be able to join the Union, or middle-age matrons. Both groups were willing to work for a very minimal wage."

    "I was not very interested by their type of puppetry. I don't really know if this was a reaction on my part because of not finding work but it all seemed so trivial and removed from reality (possibly this is what they wished to achieve). They all were beautifully-carved wooden dolls."

    "I reacted against it as I wanted something more spontaneous and stimulating, something which was not totally removed from reality but an extension of it. Wood was no longer as easily obtainable as it was 200 years ago. I settled for plastic and cardboard. I must say here the choice of materials was partly due to my own economic conditions." (Finnsbury Park,U.K. 1972)

    One puppet company was explicit about the industry, telling Roy that if he wanted to be a puppeteer in England, he'd have to go and get a job in Yorkshire. In other words just as the ABC only had BBC spoken presenters, back in 'the homeland', regional accents were a form of class distinction.

    Roy got a job as a postman to save money to go back to Australia. Even with alternate 8 and 16 hour shifts, with youthful energy and optimism, he wrote his own puppet script, The Dragons Secret Treasure, and designed puppets made with plastic bottles, egg boxes and fabrics. These early designs would become the foundation of his commitment to taking the art of puppetry into schools with his own puppet company.

      RETURN  

    The Pilgrim Puppet Theatre was an old Church in Hawthorn that was run by Robert and Nancy Aitkins. It had a great puppet set-up with a stage that moved across, backwards and forwards to change sets easily, just like the Japanese Kabuki stage.

    It was the best-equipped puppet theatre but, like many theatre companies, the issue of survival was a constant pressure. There were school shows during the week, but the first petrol crisis was occurring and it cost more to bus the audience in than the cost of the show.

    To cut the cost of using professional actors for the pre-recorded voices, the puppeteers decided to design a more stylized, simpler puppet show using a combination of marionette and rod puppets, and used their own voices. Roy was involved in designing, making and writing the scripts. The puppeteers negotiated to get paid four days a week and the use of the theatre and equipment on weekends for experimenting with the artform: sheets of cardboard made into breathing triangles with soundtracks and other objects reacting with each other. Then Roy wrote his first Nativity - A King is Born. "It had to be very reverential - no funny bits, but it was still a hit and Robert praised the Lord! Unfortunately he didn't praise the puppeteers for their almighty effort."

    It was announced that this success was a sign from God that they were to do more religious-themed shows so half the puppeteers left. Roy stayed for David and Goliath but the atmosphere was too nineteenth century to linger.

    Roy left Pilgrim Puppets with $600.00 saved and he had a choice to start up his own puppet company or go on a cruise to New Guinea. As it also coincided with the breakdown of his five year marriage, Roy was ready for a sailing adventure or, as it turned out to be, near death experiences! He would return to Melbourne with a profound respect for solid ground, and moved into a shared house in Fairfield, taking over the garage to build puppets and sets for the shows he'd always wanted to produce.

    In the mid-1970's the Melbourne arts scene was flourishing with optimistic, experimental and socially conscious young people. Some were fresh out of Arts and teaching courses, some like Roy were un-schooled, self-taught scholars with a working-class wit (the teachers hadn't been able to knock the stuffing out of him) - perfect for puppetry.

    Enthusiasm for the potential of contemporary, exploratory puppetry, connections and alliances were made with people of similar ideas and intentions. Roy freelanced around town with newly-formed companies like Handspan, Kooka Puppets and B'Spell Performance Troupe, until in 1980 at the age of 30 years he launched JIKA JIKA PUPPETS.

      Towards the intersection  

    Meanwhile, on the other side of the city, I was aged 18yrs and no longer captive to the new suburb of Clayton, where my family had emigrated in 1978. My alcoholic mother and step-father shared no respect for the Shakespeare I was reading, or the history of Asia I was absorbed in, so I looked in her Year. 11 Legal Studies book to see when I could leave home without getting in trouble.

    Safely sixteen, and resourceful, I lived in spare rooms, shedding poetry about the waves of my emotions. I was initiated into Emile Zola, Tolkien and Camus by my friendly, pot smoking, fresh faced college graduate teachers, who supported my path to individualism. I performed centre stage in sixth form plays, and was encouraged to pursue a life in the arts.

    There was purpose in writing for Hard Times, a free newspaper I picked up in a Sandringham Op-shop, because I had stories to tell about being on the Under18 dole of $36.00 a week. Jobs were elusive. I didn't have the right clothes or the train and bus fares. My energy was leaching out of me, until I couldn't get out of the bed I was renting in an old lady's back garden shed.

    Co-incidentally, all at once, a job in Abbotsford, close to the city, came from a perceptive accountant who appreciated a well-written letter, and was amused by my quirky dress and pixie boots. A surprise visit from a friend of a friend who needed a new flat mate in Elwood and I was whisked away to roads with tram lines and the delights of Acland St.

    There was a vibe in the village, a multi-cultural openness, along with an appreciation of enticing cakes and cafes with delectable soups and decent coffee. All around the walls and the windows, there were art and posters to read and be persuaded to be an audience to - admission by donation. I picked Seven, a collaborative, experimental performance from an ensemble of ex-Rusden student friends.

      Mesmerised and delighted by the movement and the courage of it, the Director invited us to an inaugural meeting to set up a network of fringe artists. It was enough to catapult me out of my employment blues.

    I had already been enrolling in acting classes all over town, some more mainstream, others more challenging and playful with text.

    I had also moved to an art deco style block of flats where resided an intimate community of friends pre - The Secret Life of Us.

    Unlike in that TV series with its tertiary educated, childless individuals, most were misfits of Catholic working-class suburban ordinariness. They were artistic and had babies who they had to hold tight to against pressure from the nuns.

    I had found a haven of compassion and understanding and was inspired by their courage and imagination to transcend conventions that were impossible for our creative spirits.

    Significantly we all shared a knowledge of how to live an artistic life very cheaply. They nurtured me, in my uncertainty, handing me brushes to experiment with paint, initiating me into the magic of the Pre-Raphelites and Picasso, Matisse and Bolero. They brought my attention to the wonders and details of Nature that I hadn't had since primary school. I was a novice, learning how to be a woman under a spiritual eclecticism of the gods, goddesses and Tarot cards.

    In my flat, elevated by Hoist's - The Planets and Dexy's Midnight Runners I wrote poetry as one long performance piece. I was unaware that I was expressing all the fears and hopes I had, and the occasional psychotic hallucinations, which I know now were the signs of my struggling with the lows of depression and the ecstasy and thrill of life in hypomania. Nobody talked about mental illness then, but through good friendships, fun and art I stayed sane enough to work on the other side of town.

    Fringe Network, a coalition of non-mainstream artists, established itself in the old Flying Trapeze Café in Brunswick St. Fitzroy. I happened to be younger, less educated and probably most naïve. Stirred by the artistic intensity and community activism I put my hand up to represent Youth Arts. At that time there was no Next Wave in Melbourne. Only South Australia had a dedicated interest in the cause of promoting young people who were keen to be mentored in all the art forms via the state sponsored Come Out Festival. I had a cause and flew with it.

    Funding was received from employment and training initiatives like the Commonwealth Employment Scheme, which enabled many community projects to pay wages to their volunteers and receive training in administrative skills. The first Melbourne Fringe Arts Festival 1984 was the pivotal event of my new life.

    Meeting Thom the Street Poet at the first celebration of Fringe Network in City Square meant I was invited to perform my poetry at the friendly writers' venues like the Living Room run by Anita Sinclair, who also had a passion for masks and puppetry.

    Life-long friendships were made during this festive time, and it wasn't hard to find a lover ... I wasn't looking for a husband, but when I saw Roy the Jika Jika Puppeteer walk in to the Winter Solstice party in the building above the Black Cat Café, I was drawn to his side. I reminded him that we had met before, and he remembered that he hadn't been paid! I've been working for him ever since!

     

    A PUPPETEER BY DEFAULT

    Within two weeks of a whirlwind romance, where I was introduced to Roy's culinary arts and the preparations of the premiere of his latest puppet production, we decided to live together. Going backwards and forwards down Hoddle St was time wasted when you didn't want to be apart ... plus the set of The Adventures of Platypus Phil which graced the whole of the lounge-room, and most of the rest of the North Fitzroy terrace house, wouldn't have fitted in my flat.

    At that time Roy employed a part-time administrator to get bookings and two other puppeteers who helped to make the puppets and perform the shows. Roy was so inspired by my Rubinesque physique, that he sculpted Mt. Higginsbottom out of dyed foam rubber as part of the rural setting, where the thorny devils hung out. So uniquely Romantic!

    The tale of a platypus who was curious about the world outside of her burrow and ends up on South Melbourne beach after a big storm was topical in its expression of children's rights and the wonders of our flora and fauna. Then one morning I was woken early by news that one of the puppeteers hadn't turned up and they had a show to do in two hours!

    I had seen the rehearsals and the shows they said ... all I had to do was do the Rock Wallaby part and they would be able to cover the rest! Within ten minutes I was in the van travelling to my first gig, learning my lines up the Calder Highway!"

    THE ADVENTURE BEGINS

    "Like any adventure" says Queen Snooze to the children, "it is exciting but also a little bit scary, but there's no sense ruminating, we must set off!" Roy rehearsed me into THE DREAM GOBBLER - an enchanting tale with a medieval style about Princess Lullabye who is having bad dreams. A variety of hand, rod and body puppets were used with a north/south/east/west set so that the Royal pair would take their puppet horse through the audience and be led to different countries where they might find a cure for bad dreams.

    Jika Jika Puppets continued its hand-to-mouth theatre-in-education schedule but was knocked back from the Australia Council and Victorian Ministry for the Arts for project funding for the adult puppet show script and designs of Kitchen Sink.

    "We were performing Dream Gobbler and Four Chinese Brothers, rehearsing Platypus Phil, so we hired a student dramaturg from Victorian College of the Arts to work on the application forms. The task was to take the strengths and weaknesses of all the different kinds of puppets and give them a character.

     

     

    The strongest was the Mother who was a body puppet, and the Father was a rod puppet whose movements were mechanical so he was a process worker. The Son was impressionable so he was a marionette blackboard boy. The impetus came from the slap around, slap stick of the Punch and Judy tradition and the social realism of theatre that had been revolutionary in Britain, so I wanted to do the same with puppetry, but once there was no funding for it, the puppeteers slowly started to leave.

    They'd given their all with the shows, plus the company was financially unsustainable. Mailing out 3000 flyers only got a one percent return. On a good week they would get a hundred dollars.

    Roy had always wanted to have children and he had proposed kids, not marriage, in the first fortnight before moving in. He explained to me that he couldn't wait around as he was thirty-three. In 1984 we married in the Edinburgh Gardens (a rare thing in the artistic community then)!

    Domestic issues came to the fore. Overcome by the experience of pregnancy and child-birth I wrote my poetry play RITES OF PASSAGE while breastfeeding. Parts of the production used slides and shadow puppetry to dramatise the conflicts of my ruined relationship with my parents.

    I performed the show at La Mama for the first Next Wave festival, Universal 2 for the Fringe and also the Women's 150 festival. It was well received and I produced a cassette of the show.

    It was also hard to keep performing with Roy in The Dream Gobbler. Half-way during the show my breasts would be so hard! By the time Queen Snooze had shared her magic cakes and was laying next to the children to have a snooze, ready for the witch to appear, milk was seeping out of my costume!"

    Thinking of our priorities, we got a loan for low-income earners from the State Government and moved to a solid home and garden in the child-friendly town of Kyneton. Roy took over the middle room to build a new show, THE QUEEN BEE.

    It was a perfect show for primary school students as it was made completely out of rubbish: cardboard boxes, tubes, plastic containers and material. Roy was showing them how they could make great puppets with everyday things. He had been reading The Uses of Enchantment by Bruno Bettleheim too, clarifying the importance of fairy tales to our lives and so our creative partnership became REAL FANTASY THEATRE.

     

     

    PUPPETS AS ENDANGERED SPECIES

    It was during this time that somebody in the audience had appreciated the joy and wonder of the other show called LET'S NOT SAY GOODBYE - about endangered species. After years of packing out tons of heavy wooden puppets and sets Roy had worked away, making his puppets light and transportable. Foam rubber was a perfect material. It could be dyed an array of bright colours, was easy to sculpt and glue with contact adhesive and it gave the puppets an ease of life-like movement.

    Centre stage was a tree set over an aluminum step ladder. A branch represented every continent and that housed the different puppet characters who all had their own humorous voices and sad but true tales. The vast variety of animals represented Roy's passion for Nature and his concerns for their future, but I also was certain that they portrayed all the different aspects of his personality!

    There was the tapir and toucan, the bush baby and python, wooly monkey and sloth, a rhino who loved to sit in the bog and dream, and Possum Gaddafi who was threatening to rap-dance in peoples ceilings. The European rat who was hitching a ride to Australia said his hair was green due to acid rain.

    Fortunately there were visionary public servants in Victoria at this time who were inspired by Roy's ability to pass on an environmental message to a large, diverse audience in such a comically visual way. The recycling unit of the Environment Protection Authority commissioned a play and it was called MANY HAPPY RETURNS.

    Scraps, a hungry backyard duck is scavenges for wrigglers.

    "Just as he is hedonistic, amiable, funny and a little nerdy, each individual component of the piles of rubbish has its own peculiar personality and delivery. There is the rhyming compost heap, a pile of bottles eagerly awaiting their friendly bottle-o and their consequent transformation; the soft drink and baked bean cans who are to seal their various friendships by being crushed together and lastly the stack of papers as big as a tree who are also keenly anticipating their next re-incarnation." (Wendy Boynton, Lowdown, Feb, 1993).

    Although I was unable to perform in the shows with two toddlers needing most of my attention, the family toured schools around Victoria, South Australia and New South Wales in our trusty yellow Mazda 1800 van. Loaded up with dog, kids, and nappy buckets and camper-trailer it was a working holiday of which the highlight was a Northern Territory tour that included a two week residency in the Aboriginal community of Lajamanu.

    This meant, when Sweet tries to cheer her can-pal up about being recycled by saying: Just think, if we are to be crushed so tightly together we will become as one….or two or a whole stack of little cans! AND SHE SHOVES HIS SUN GLASSES ASIDE AND YELLS: Ah come on, just take off those sunnies or I'll crush them! AND KISSES HIM the Queensland Arts Council wanted to tone down that whole scene…

    AN UNCERTAIN LIVELIHOOD

    As the children got in the higher grades it was becoming problematic to go on the longer tours, so Roy would go by himself which he didn't like. He would even drive back a 1000kms after two or three shows on a Friday, just to be home at the weekend.

    Three months in Northern Queensland and the Torres Strait was a fantastic experience and good money but the light plane only fitted the puppets, the puppeteer and pilot. It was too lonely and Roy decided he'd never ever want to be away from the family for so long again.

    After thirty years as a professional puppeteer one can be called a Master, but a Master Puppeteer also delivered diagnosis of osteo-arthritis, and the realisation that there was no accumulated superannuation. Living expenses were increasing and less work was coming in, meaning more time dealing with social security and having to apply for jobs in which he had no experience and was too old for.

    Regional isolation had meant being out of the loop for opportunities with colleagues and new projects, so being squeezed into a supporting puppetry role for a children's television series called Lift Off was a dent in Roy's sliding self-esteem, even though the pay was great.

    An agent had engaged Roy to take a puppetry film to country schools and then run 'rubbish' puppet-making workshops. A book proposal for a How to series published by Angus & Robertson fizzled out due to the series being abandoned. He went back to Kitchen Sink, offering the play to funded companies, but they had their own agendas. Even applications to be Artistic Director in companies he had connections to were rejected, especially galling when non-puppetry people were appointed instead. I encouraged Roy to spend the time creating a new adult show which he had been dreaming about, based on the surrealism of Max Ernst.

    The interpretation was not to the painter's trustees liking, and they rejected it strongly. Having the same difficulty as Roy finding regular work, I learned to drive and put together a one woman show for pre-school audiences called THE GINGERBREAD KID. Roy made the puppets and sets and I set off doing shows but it was still not enough.

    After 30 years of professional experience and evolving artistry Roy couldn't get a different job or find a way to pursue his ambitions in the puppetry world. His last application for support was at the new Melbourne Museum to be an Artist in Residence - bringing the arts and sciences together in an imaginative, accessible way - but he was pipped at the post by an academic who was writing a dictionary on the language of Antarctica.

     
    The State we left behind,
    Had no use for us,
    So stagnant had our life become,
    Our visions meaning nothing, and
    So we picnicked in that gutted Albert park to fare-well
    Friends, surrounded by yellow flickering ribbons for
    A car race, then up the Calder we drove
    Away from the rows of daffodils.

    For us, a tropical, new labour dream as
    The ties on the trailer tarpaulin flapped
    Showing glimpses of old shows, bits of plywood
    And foam scraps for new puppets;
    Trash to other eyes so no fear of theft, them
    Polystyrene balls, bags of fabric, tubes, beads and
    Tins of glue, all seeds of fortune for us
    Poor transient artists riding up the Newell.

    The only hope for the future was to sell up and start again. The Queensland Marionette Theatre was winding up and there was a good chance, said the project officer for Arts Queensland, that REAL FANTASY THEATRE would do well there, especially with their latest black theatre script, REEF. It was promising.

    Brisbane City Council aided promotion of the recycling show, but the chief at Queensland Arts Council didn't want Roy back, though he might look at a new show. We suggested that a couple of tours would bring money to create a new show, that we had had consistently good feedback from students and staff, but we were not what he wanted. It was made clear that we wouldn't be able to go into Queensland schools without their authorisation.

    I networked from the Tivoli caravan park, building up clients and re-working THE DREAM GOBBLER for parties and fetes. When the stormy season hit, the black light theatre application for THE REEF project was rejected. However the family had found a home on a hectare of land. With somewhere safe and private to settle, I let the tears and agony of a major depression flow.

    It slowly dawned that puppetry had no future without recognition and funding, especially for the projects that we wanted to deliver for our souls to grow. Roy was burned out from years of producing quality, uniquely Australian puppetry, contributing to a dynamic culture.

    The priority was our daughters. Thriving on the love and creativity of our parents wasn't enough in the teenage years; new sneakers and clothes, orthodontist treatment and money for a decent education were what were needed.

    Driven to wear suits and shiny shoes
    We presented ourselves to a myriad of
    Arts administrators at many meetings in
    Designer furnished towers and
    Civic buildings to bid for a share of
    Creative Nation with our puppets,
    Poems, Plays and possibilities of
    Producing to thrive 'stead of
    Merely survive.

    THE MAGIC OF PUPPETRY

    Puppeteering is an imporrant part of creatIve culture in AustraLia that needs to be nurtured and supported more than it already is. Sharing the joy and wonder of learning through the artform of puppetry to young and older is unique. A puppet enters - the audience laughs, it moves, it speaks - laughter and excitement.

    The content of the message is absorbed on many levels. Teachers and children have witnessed miracles as previously 'shy' or 'troublesome' kids participate in the shows when invited by Roy to work a puppet.

    In towns like Moree, with a sorry history between black and white populations, the astonished reaction to an indigenous girl being picked to play the part of a princess was an indication of how the arts can transcend race and cultural barriers.

     

    The magic of puppetry is that the discipline and skills of the puppeteer is translated as anarchic, a life force of its own making. Even the Christians used puppets as props for their biblical stories as have Shamans for their proselytising. The puppets are okay when they use it, but not when a free running puppet gets loose! For some young boys who find it hard to contain or communicate their feelings, their natural inclination is to hit and pull when all they really want to do is to cuddle the cheeky puppet!

    Rather than punish, aggression is channelled into creative and respectful behaviour. The puppet promises that if they sit quietly on their bottoms, they can shake the rock-wallabys foam paw, or if they stand up and are kind and gentle, the python will wrap itself around them and give them a big hug!

    Our discipline becomes theirs as they learn to interract with the puppets gently whilst still having the fun of spontaneity. As a reward for being a great audience they are invited to ask questions about the puppets and sets. Then they get to work a puppet and join in with Roy as he leads them through an improvised performance, revising the themes of the show.

    The response of adults is as joyful. Their child within comes forth and they cherish the experience. Laughter is freeing. It is wild and silly. A class of Year 7,8 & 9 private school girls turned to look at a teacher to see if she was laughing. Was it proper to laugh at the crazy duck antics? Scraps the duck was so uncool he was hilarious. There's a lesson in that too.

    A 'REAL' JOB

    We laughed when Roy got a job as a carer for Disability Services, as the ongoing family joke from his Uncle Jesse was: "Hey lad, have you got a real job yet?" At forty, Roy could lift the fog of his mother's dementia by telling her how much he was earning on a regular wage, plus shift allowance and superannuation.

    For the first time in our lives we had a secure income, which our daughters both appreciated, declaring that there was no way they were going to pursue a career in the arts!

    Occasionally we do a puppet show and workshop, but these are rare events. I utilise my creativity and experience within the Diversional Therapy field. Roy's passion for the artform has transformed into planting native rainforest trees and other indigenous plants, plus looking forward to a well-deserved long-service leave!


    About the Writer Julie McNeill

      Julie McNeill arrived in Melbourne in 1978 and wrote her first poems. Homeless at 16, she managed to get through Year 12 to the U18 dole. Julie wrote her first journalistic articles for 'Hard Times" newspaper for the Unemployed. She learned book-keeping for a year before getting depressed and moving to St.Kilda, where she discovered painting and writing for poetry performance. She is a founding member of 'Fringe Network', a resource for artists and Youth Arts Co-ordinator for 'Melbourne Fringe Arts Festival'. She met lots of life-long, loving poet friends at various reading venues and has performed multi-media 'Rites of Passage' 1985 in Melbourne theatres, inspired by the births of two daughters. Julie was trained by her husband Roy as a puppeteer, performing in schools and community venues throughout Australia for the next 20 years. She continues to write poetry, prose & journalism for www.brisbanevalley.info in Queensland. Julie has recently used her creative skills and intelligence in work as a Diversional Therapist in disability services and aged care.
      



    Thylazine No.11 (June, 2006)


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    May 17

    THE GETTING OF WISDOM

     

    Diagnosed with Bipolar at 37 years made sense. It fitted perfectly. After a major depression, the experience of mania and psychosis catapulted me into hospital. Good advice from the nurse to focus on my own recovery and not anybody elses and my belief that creativity was the key to wellness was vital on that long road to recovery.

    Post-trauma I adapted to a life of medication blends and doses, intrinsically optimistic with faith in the process . Art and Science is my shield. I function well enough, though not enough to fit into the mainstream of society, but then, I never have.

    I learned about being a 'round peg in a square hole' reading The Getting of Wisdom by Henry Handel Richardson in Year Eleven.i The chaos of emotions and hormones of the adolescent girl culture remains relevant, not because I haven't grown up and none the wiser, but because like Laura I have to accept the view of others - of being a misfit, in a positive way.

    For Laura and I , whether it is class, personality type or living with Bi-Polar Mood Affective Disorder no matter how one tries to fit in there is something that others perceive as different - something about the self-possessed personality and the confidence to express our authentic selves; Laura with her histrionic and defiant piano playing and I through the keyboard of my laptop, pumping out those words with rhyme, disorder and gentle sonata.

    To quell the excesses of moodiness, depression and mania, part of the management plan usually lies with the exploration of our creative selves. Before I knew about mental illness I reveled in writing, painting, performing, and being a 'show-off'. As Dr. Kay Jamison has shown, the evidence is that many people with mood disorders are engaged in the arts.ii

    Unfortunately, it's hard to make a living with your artistic flair. I related to most sufferers of bipolar disorder in John McManamy's publications who said for all the creativity, they are unable to hold down a job. iiiMy family called me a 'job snob', because I was miserable working in 'normal' jobs like everyone else. That hurt, but I had the youthful exuberance to follow my bliss out of the suburbs, to inner-city Melbourne with fuscia colours in a punk hair cut and pixie boots from the op-shop.

    Pied Piper like, I called for other young artists to follow me, creating festivals, networking with audacity, and spilling my views naively to predatory media. Networking with other 'fringe' fellows, writing, performing poetry, falling for musicians and dragging them back to my lair was only brought to an abrupt halt by an excruciating diagnosis of genital herpes!

    Not all impulsive acts of the hypo manic are detrimental! Wisdom comes when one is laid up with self-pity! Acyclovir became my miracle drug and work, rest and play was tempered. The decision to have children and marry within a couple of weeks of meeting Roy at a Winter Solstice feast could be regarded as impulsive, but twenty three years later I can say my brilliant insight about Mr. Right was a winner.

    Motherhood meant being a good role-model to enable our children to grow up wise and well, and prevent passing on the psychological damage of my own family tragedies. A screenplay, theatre play, and novel nearly got published, funded, filmed, before their rejection.

    Off-campus university workload was reduced, then deferred because I was juggling with too many ideas and ambitions. Identifying with the Olympian who couldn't row anymore, I couldn't read or comprehend a word or sentence.

    This disease does a good job of defeating the ego. For females it is a double calamity dealing with the uncertainty of how the hormones will throw you every loony cycle. As I grow older the concept of the 'kindling effect' has become real and disabling.iv

    My skills and enthusiasm were guided towards Diversional Therapy, but even then, the pressure from management, co-workers and obsessive thinking about the clients and the job were too much to cope with. My limits to pursue paid employment are now reduced to four hours a day, three days a week.

    No more rushing, planning and organising like the hypo manic white rabbit from Alice In Wonderland. Forgetting to get my Webster Packs is a sure sign to take my Lithium, a few long deep breaths, and some solitude.

    When the passion and the politics are gathering too much momentum, I let go of saving the world with letters and petitions, turn off the radio and slow down with a swim. Relaxation with some soothing and gently inspiring music takes one to a simmer. You may think you are selfish and going against your fathers Protestant work ethic, but this is what you need.

    Maturity is a safety-catch. I have always been medication compliant. As much as I enjoy teasing myself with shamanic delusions I like to know what is real and be in control. Having a good relationship with the doctor can be a double-edged sword however. Working with your psychiatrist to keep from a state of chaos and confusion requires the patience of a saint as my irreligious mother would say, and also the chastity of one as far as I am concerned!

    Being hypo manic and at your peak sexually, it doesn't take much to fall madly in love with your caring, intelligent, knowledgeable doctor; “Insight “, as they keep reminding us Bi polars is a necessity to keep us on the straight and virtuous.....I'm cringing with embarrassment but the evidence suggests that being a “biological time machine” is a common calamity to deal with.

    Transference is very real and sadly, must be kept in the realm of fantasy as much as God must be kept to heel in the politics of our country. Michael Conner, Psy.D states, "Transference reactions are caused by unmet emotional needs, neglect, seductions and other abuses that transpired when you were a child. Recognising this pattern when it occurs and searching for the knowledge and counsel to prevent harm is a necessity.”v

    Diverting futile fantasies, maintaining control and equilibrium is no easy feat. Recognising the symptoms of hypo mania and the likelihood of developing into mania and/or psychosis requires expert and intuitive skill. Honesty with your medical and significant others takes courage so continually building self-esteem is necessary for when a crack shows or a brick falls out.

    Those little pills, especially the sedatives needed to slow those racing thoughts and brilliant metaphors can be taken to get some deep sleep therapy. It is so wonderful to be able to have the energy and seeming perceptiveness of a manic spectrum but sleep is a blessing for clarity of the mind. Getting the pills right to allow a decent descent in to the land of Nod is my favourite last thing on the plate. Without it, wisdom can't break through.

    To aid sleep and prevent from losing your mind in an exuberant excess, release the valve regularly with a swim, sexual activity, and dancing around the lounge room – whatever gives you pleasure so you'll do it often! Having a dog to be responsible for if you're not playing soccer with the kids is good motivation. My dog is very good at dragging me up the hill to work a multitude of muscles!

    We can avoid the extremes of Bipolar by loving who we are, keeping free from toxic relationships and environments, drugs, and fundamentalist ideologies. At a volunteer course for Youth Outreach work I discovered that my comrades were devout Christians who revealed they heard the voice of God. “It is a mystery that I also have experienced,” I said, “but for me it is a signal to go to the mental health unit as I have a tenuous grip on reality!.”

    I am strongly spiritual, yet the gospel truth is related again to brain chemistry. It helps to keep a broad perspective, with enough wisdom to forgive yourself when you know not what you do.

    For people like me ecstasy comes cheap(and apparently if you rub behind the ears that will induce a religious experience for those so disposed). It should be taught in re-hab!vi

    At this stage in my life I believe it is wiser to be a good secular citizen than a saint. The urge to jump on my broomstick and provoke the patriarchal doctrines may cause a stir and fly the flag of Germaine Greer, but the idea of being a round peg in a square hole is the discovery there may be a round one...somewhere out there.

    Always mindful that the energy and wit of hypo mania won't last forever one enjoys the moment and productivity of it, focusing on the discipline required to tap out these paragraphs in an orderly, sane manner.


    i The Getting of Wisdom 1910, Henry Handel Richardson, Minerva Press 1993

    iiTouched with Fire-Manic Depressive Illness & the Artistic Temperament, Paperback 1996


    iiiLiving Well with Depression and Bipolar Disorder, Collins, 2006 www.mcmannweb.com


    ivThe 'kindling' model in Bipolar disorder, www.bipolar.about.com/cs/brainchemistry/a/0009/_kindling1.htm


    vTransference: Are you a biological time machine? Michael G. Conner, Psy.D 2006 www.crisiscounselling.com/Articles/Transference.htm


    viwww.bbc.co.uk/science/horizon/2003/godonbrain.shtml



    Julie's blog at www.jewels42.spaces.live.com/

    (c)copyright Julie McNeill, April 2007

    all rights reserved

    8:22 AM | Add a comment | Permalink | Blog it | PSYCHIATRIC MATTERS
    May 05

    Australian Labor Day Weekend 2007 in Ipswich, Qld.


    Ipswich - Labor Day weekend - May 5th 2007 - the workers united will never be defeated -
    slogans, badges, balloons, t.shirts saying Your Rights at Work worth fighting and voting for - and deep, rousing voices from the back chanting, Your Rights at Work, Howard Out! and from the front in reply they shout Vote for Labor, Vote for Rudd!
    Bagpipes stir hearts and minds marching in unison down Brisbane St - Brass band trumpets Monty Pythons funny walk song! The sky is blue and huge, so anything is possible....Laughter comes easy, slapping on sun cream and hats and swigging on precious liquid H2O.

    Three Labor/Union women - figureheads for a just and caring Nation make their presence felt, standing on Ipswich soil, is Sharon, Grace and Julia, with their high intelligence, and down-to-earth words and demeanor. They toil for a fair deal for workers and families for now, and for facing the future.

    Free hamburgers and drinks, rides and jumping tiger for kids of loyal to the cause unionists and party members, and the Ipswich residents may go home and reflect on what it's all about, and why they have to vote Howard and his ilk out!


    REMEMBER EMMA MILLER

    She was a tiny Sheila, Mrs Miller,

    Yet fought her whole life for the Rights

    Of Man and of course the female folk too.

    Not shy to stand up for a womans sufferage

    To cast a vote, and live a life safe and secure

    Her humanism and solidarity to the Labor cause

    Against the greed and might of treacherous

    Capitalists remains true to this day.

    Emma was firm in her mission of a better life

    For the battlers, the women and children who

    Were paupers on less than a minimum wage,

    Who could ill afford a loaf of bread

    After paying the rent in rat infested squalor

    On the flood-traps of the Brisbane river.

    Her weapon was to use her intelligence, but

    When push came to shove, she drew out

    Her hat-pin and stuck it in the Commissioners horse

    Who barred her way to petition the Premier that day.

    The powers that be took a fall, but not before

    They'd trounced on the right to march

    In city streets, shouting, Cop that!

    Swinging and swooping down on the masses

    With their batons.

    1900 seems so long ago but the message of Emma Miller

    Is clear - Not to lay idle when there's people suffering

    The tyranny of bullies and bastards

    Who use their power and money to entrench inequality.

    There was no way that the 'Grand Old Lady' was

    Inferior as she took on the hierachy!

    True and loyal to the cause, she was a giant amongst women

    And men, even though she was only 4ft 10inch tall!

    She travelled and inspired from Toowoomba to Charleville

    In a carriage, organising campaigns and

    Events like no other, so we must remember and

    Honour the lady who led the struggle up the steps

    To Legislative chambers.

     

     

    (C)copyright Julie McNeill 2006

    4:25 PM | Add a comment | Permalink | Blog it | News and politics
    April 24

    THE SONS OF BREDON (work-in-progress)

     
     

     A BREDON FAMILY EMIGRATES - 1853



    Charles Higgins, aged 38, of Bredon, Worcestershire, an Agricultural Labourer like his father Richard Higgins(born, bred and buried in Bredon 1782 - 1865), said goodbye to his father, ready to set sail with his young family across the Atlantic Ocean for a new life of much better prospects and prosperity.


    Angeline Higgins(nee Stratford)aged 34, also of Bredon, two young children to mind embarks on an adventure of a life-time. The couple had married in their thirties, and compared to most in the tiny hamlet were quite ambitious. They lived with Charles father, Richard, a widower, who lived(according to the 1851 Census), at Waterloo Cottage, Tewkesbury Rd. Bredon.

    Their first child was Samuel Charles Higgins, born in Bredon on 15 March 1848 and christened at Bredon Church on 21 January, 1849. His younger sister, Catharine Ann Higgins was born on 20 April 1850.

    Why would this young family say goodbye, to move so far away. “For good” is the only answer, and why to Iowa in the United States of America?

    Richards second son, Frederick Higgins, born in Bredon 1820 had moved up to Belbroughton, ready for anything and met a woman called Betty Davenport, maybe in the Nailers Arms, over a few ales. She led him a merry dance to a cottage in The Gutter -(a traditional name for an old track in the valley), where he ended up making Nails at her fathers forge out back of the cottage.
    Betty gave birth to  Richards second grandson in 1850 called William Higgins. It's not certain that the grandfather knew how either of his sons were doing, as nobody could read or write, but Betty the Belbroughton Nailer had managed to get his son, Frederick to the Holy Trinity Church, two years after little William was christened.

    It was a Marriage solemnized by Banns, on Christmas Day 1852. This was a legal requirement where a notice had to be read out to the congregation for three Sundays in a row to make sure there was no legal impediment to the marriage. It was also an alternative to getting a more expensive wedding licence. Couples who wanted a quickie wedding had to go to Gretna Green, over the border in Scotland, although travelling from Worcestershire would have taken as long!

    The main industries in the Bromsgrove district was nail and scythe makers, some even made for export to the farmers of the middles states of North America - maybe to his brother Charles to use, a little bit of home as he grew rich in the old colonies. No fancy Worcestershire pottery - only practical objects like scythes and nails.

    So Sarah, his wife had passed on and now his oldest sons had moved away for a bright new future. At 79 years Richard Higgins found lodgings and had time to think. It would be unlikely that he would have suffered the tragic news of his first grandson, Samuel's death on ship, and buried in the Atlantic ocean, aged five years.

    By the time Charles and Angleline set foot off the sailing ship onto the soil of America, found their place to settle in the farming state of Iowa, their daughter Catharine had married a young man from Kent, and they went on to deliver to their new country, ten babies who lived good, productive long lives, half of whom are still alive, but Richard Higgins could only imagine and never know for sure how things had worked out for his boys.

    Richard had a third son, James born in 1826 at Bredon, but something had happened, he can't remember now, but he moved himself to the The Royal Oak Hotel in Front St. Bredon at 15yrs. Probably, by someone he met in the bar, he heard about how there was lots of gardening work around the fancy houses around Droitwich Spa.
    He had a mind to get out of the tiny hamlet too, so he just about ran the miles further north. By 1845 he secured a job as a gardener at Barbourne Terrace in Claines     and got to know a domestic servant called Anne Bradley(the same maiden name as his dear mother).

    She was from Belbroughton, and ten years older, but they were good companions and they married at the Claines  Church when he was 23 years. who was in service at Rigley Hall and they married and had a son in 1850. The Master and Mistress of the House were good Christian people and didn't mind the addition in 1850 of baby Charles Higgins(after his oldest brother who went to America).

    Anne had gone home to Bellbroughton, Bromsgrove for the birth, as she was worried about having her first child so late and wanted to be with her mother and female folk.  After her lie-in, and the baby was Churched, she returned to Claines where her and James were in service.

    Obviously little Charles grew to love gardening alongside his dad, and he may have been taught to read and write by the owners, then found a position with an aquaintance of his parents employer, because at 21 years he is a gardener at a grand house in Surrey, where he was to meet and marry his wife Sarah Elizabeth.

    How proud his parents would have felt to get a little note in 1881 that he, Charles John Higgins had become Head Gardener for the Earl of Derby's Lancashire Estate, and had a son, who they had called after the father and grandfather, Charles James Higgins born St. Michaels on Wyre 1878.

    Richard was a man blessed with four sons and grandsons, though all had left the ancient soil of Bredon(pronounced by the natives as Breedon). His youngest son, Henry Higgins, born 1828 had worked with his dad until there wasn't enough work to feed a growing lad, and he like his brothers wanted to go further afield. Not too far, over the bridge to a farm in Boddington, Gloucestershire where he wed a young lass called Jane who was born at Stroud.

    Little Henry was born soon after in 1849, but when the boys came together they dreamed and schemed - the oldest and the youngest full of having their own farm in the Mid-West of America, where there was lots of opportunity for a man and his sons . That was the place they went to, Charles and James and the young 'uns. They had heard of a place called Missouri - a land of prairies and grand rivers - somewhere to plant the Higgins stock, where an ordinary man could create his own estate for generations to come. So they went. All his boys. Richard guessed it was Gods will, so he had to be content.

    (copyright JM 2007-all rights reserved)









     


    3:54 PM | Add a comment | Permalink | Blog it | FAMILY HERSTORY
    April 19

    SKELETONS 2

    SKELETONS

     

    I DON'T TALK ABOUT RELIGION OR POLITICS

    said

    NAN, WHEN I TRIED TO MAKE CONVERSATION

    ABOUT HOW GREAT IT WAS

    NELSON MANDELA WAS FREE.

    EYES DOWN! OR YOU'LL MISS A NUMBER

    TO CALL OUT BINGO!


    DAD said BABBY! DO YOU HAVE TO

    DRAG THE SKELETONS OUT OF THE WARDROBE?

    WISHING HE COULD STEP INTO A STATELY

    HOME THAT WAS HIS OWN,

    AS A GENTLEMAN

    IN 'PRIDE AND PREJUDICE.'

    THEY ALL SPOKE POLITELY,

    NO SHOUTING

    AND SWEARING, AND DIDN'T DISCUSS

    ILLIGITIMACY WITH THEIR DAUGHTERS,

    HE STATED

    WHILE DRIVING MY SISTER AND I

    TO A SHAKESPEARE PLAY,

    WHERE KIND WORDS OFT' SPOKE

    BETRAYAL AND TRAJEDY.

    WE LAUGHED AT DEAR DELUSIONAL ROMANTIC DAD

    AND YELLED - YEAH! AS LONG AS YOU WEREN'T A WOMAN,

    BLACK OR POOR !

    AND HE TOLD US WE WATCHED TOO

    MUCH 'CHANNEL 4!'

    THEY'VE A LOT TO ANSWER FOR, SAID OUR FATHER,

    BEING PART TO BLAME

    FOR WHY BRITAIN WASN'T GREAT NO MORE!

    I AM SPEECHLESS IN THE CUSHY

    BACK SEAT OF HIS LATEST CAR,

    BUT WRITE A POEM LATER

    CALLED,

    NAN IS A SKELETON NOW:

    HER BONES ARE ASH,

    HER NUMBER IS UP

    AND POLITICS AND RELIGION COUNT FOR NO WOMAN

    WHO HAD TO RUN FROM THE BLACK COUNTRY WITH A BABY INSIDE.

    NANS PARENTS STOOD BY AND COVERED HER SHAME

    IN BRUM, 1931, SO NO FOLK KNEW THE CHILD

    WAS CURSED BY DEUTERONOMY.

    THEREFORE, I MUST TAKE AFTER MUM WHO THREW

    HER BIRTH DEED IN THE AIR FOR EVERYONE TO STARE

    AT THE EMPTY SPACE OF HER FATHERS NAME

    PRONOUNCING HE MUST HAVE BEEN

    A RED HAIRED CHINA MAN!

    NO SHAME, BUT HER FACE TURNED RED

    WHEN THE LOCAL PRIEST EASILY GUESSED

    HER CATHOLIC ROOTS AND

    PURSUED HER UP HEELEY RD

    ASKING WHY, FOR THE LOVE OF MARY

    SHE HADN'T BEEN SEEN IN CHURCH?

    THE REBELLIOUS BLOOD OF A CELTISH LASS

    BOILED, REPLIED THAT SHE'D MARRIED

    A PRODDY - MADE HER ESCAPE INTO THE BINGO HALL.


    LEFT WITH THE LEGACY OF

    BASTARD SECRETS,

    SIBLINGS GET ON WITH THEIR OWN LIVES,

    KEEPING MUM, AND OCCUPY SPANISH LANDSCAPES,

    WHILE THIS GRAND-DAUGHTER

    KEEPS DIGGING TILL ANOTHER BONE STICKS

    OUT OF THE EARTH, AND WITH THE ENERGY

    IT TOOK HER FOREFATHERS TO REACH FOR COAL -

     

    WITH DADS PROUD PROTESTANT WORK ETHIC ,

    I CONNECT HIM TO

    THE IRISH BRANCH SO CLOSE TO THE BONE;

    PAY - BACK FOR SNIPING AT MY

    SYMPATHY OF THE BIRMINGHAM SIX -

    ITS CHILDISH, I KNOW, THIS SPITTLE OF WORDS

    I DARE TO CONJURE FROM A RICH DEPOSIT,

    BUT LET US BE TRUE AND NOT DENY.

    REALLY FATHER, YOU DON'T HAVE TO WINCE

    EACH TIME I SEND ANOTHER POEM;

    I SAY GET THEM SKELETONS LOOSE AND DANCE

    THE DIRT AND MUCKY SOD OFF

    SO WE CAN SIT AROUND THE HEARTH

    AND RELATE A GOOD STORY

    WE CAN ALL REFLECT ON, AND DRINK TO THAT,

    ME OLD DAD; THE LOVE THAT MAKES ME BURST

    THE BUBBLE AND SING FOR ME SUPPER

    AND WATCH YOUR EYES ROLL OVER!

     

     Julie McNeill

    (c)copyright Sept.2006

      POST-SCRIPT: SORRY DAD, SPOKE TOO SOON, AGAIN.

    GENEOLOGY FACTS FOUND IN CYBER-SPACE SAY

    YOU ARE A SON OF
    HIGGINS, BREDON BORN -

    BAPTISED AND BURIED AS HARDWORKING

    PEASANTRY FOR THE PARISH.

    NO SIGN OF THE IRISH OR THE GENTRY EITHER,

    AS IN JANE AUSTIN TIMES OUR GRAND

    PARENTS WERE HOWING AND SCYTHING, BAILING,

    MAYBE ROLLING IN THE HAY

    AT HARVEST FESTIVAL

    BECAUSE THERE ARE A FEW BABES BEING

    BLESSED IN THE CHAPEL NINE MONTHS LATER!
     

    THE CYCLES OF LIFE CONTINUE - AND DAUGHTERS

    STANDING AT THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE

    DIG AT THE CONSCIENCE OF THEIR FATHERS,

    BECAUSE THEY CAN, WHEN IT IS THEIR ONLY

    RECOURSE FOR THE SILENCE - THE ABSENCE

    OF CONVERSATION, WHEN ALL THERE IS,

    ARE SKELETONS.

     

      (copyright) julie mcneill April 2007

    all rights reserved

     

     

     

     

     

     

    9:35 AM | Add a comment | Permalink | Blog it | Poems
    March 29

    IT'S A FREE MEDIA - ISN'T IT? TOO BLOODY RIGHT!

    I heard prospective Senator from Ipswich on Radio National today - It's a Free Media, right? - But what the bloody hell is happening? Never thought I'd hear P.H. campaigning on the ABC. 
    What is Radio National putting on the blumin' bile of Hanson? Just coz they have the Chasers "Bias Police" on them? Bleedin' hell Fran, it spoiled my bloody morning. Reminded me of my bleeding youth listening to the same old, same old.....

          BLEEDING HELL! I swore at Radio One in Birmingham when I was home alone as a nine year old, colouring in and listening to Enoch bloody Powell saying there were too many Jamaicans, West Indians, Pakistanis, you name it they were coming in and destroying Great bloomin' Britain.....

    The announcer was polite to the Honourable gentlemen. Didn't say ON YER BIKE like he did to the peasants that called in who disagreed with him.

    WHATS THE BLOODY DEAL? I asked my Brummy self. Who the hell is this Enoch who doesn't like the sight of black people....I had a crush on Easton Shaw from my school. He was the best soccer player. He was smart and good looking and he was nice, a bit shy. His sister was my best friend and they were black as the ace of spades.

    My mum said I wasn't to go out with a black boy because everyone would say I was black mans bait from then on and ruin my chances to be a bride.

    BULLSHIT MUM I said to myself. I had read MARTIN LUTHER KING in the school library and he and I had a dream. I read it out loud and strong for school assembly and played the song, "what we need is a great big melting pot, big enough, big enough, to take the world and all its got, keep on stirring for a hundred years or more, to turn out coffee coloured people by the score!"

    That was one answer I supposed, but we could all live with each other in peace and understanding and mutual respect.

    Very simple - but why didn't people try it?

    Thirty-five years later in a veil of tears, menopause and BLEEDING, RUDDY(Nan said that's the polite way of saying bloody) Pauline Hanson is invited onto radio to warn those Muslims and Asians not to bloody come here(no matter what the billboards say). 

    It was alright for me of course, being a white Pom who could breed more whiteys but my daughter has now met a black African-white-Anglo-Indian man whose family was colonised and worked for the bleedin' British, then fled from Bloody Idi Amin to their Colonial capital, tried to get on with life when every bloody where was the sound of the Nationl bloody Front marching.

    I'm white, I'm Australian, Pauline, but will you lynch me when I say - I hate the bloody Aussie flag - I always have, with the bleedin' Union Jack. Makes me cringe - what do you say to that, you bleeding Fascist - why don't you go over bloody there, where you came from and get off my bloody radion station.

    Bloodies in the Bible, Bloodies in the Book, if you don't bloody believe me, have a bloody look

    !(Tiverton Rd. Primary School Playground, 1972)

    10:58 AM | Add a comment | Permalink | Blog it | News and politics
    March 05

    Remembering Margaret from Albury



    Margaret Coyen,  a small wiry, fiery woman of fifty has a gold painted plastic trophy on the mantelpiece presented to her by childhood friends and allies, for surviving the systematic, physical, emotional and sexual abuse she suffered while under the 'care and protection' of the most powerful institutions of society - the Government and the Church.
    In 1950, six year old Margaret Coyen was brought out to Australia under the Child Migration Scheme from Nazareth House orphanage in Birmingham, England. I met Margaret via my enquiry to the Sisters Of Mercy in Albury who had run St. John's orphanage from 1867-1967, as it was there that my mother too, had been transported to,     as a Child Migrant at the age of nine.
    I had grown up hearing many incredible stories of her time there and I wanted to place it in my minds reality. The nun put in charge of such enquiries always directed them to Margaret. We met at the wrought iron gates of St. John's Orphanage, Thagoona, 7kms out of Albury. It was like we had known each other for years - not just because we had the same taste in clothes - but because when I said my mothers name - she bent over, broke into a fit of coughing, "I knew your mother! We shared the same cabin in the ship together! Oh yes, I remember her!"

    'Coyney' as the 'girls' who still live in the area, call her, said all the abuse mum had told me about was true. I also learned that the long-term affects to their internal and external life experiences were similar; a culture of domestic violence, depression, suicides, substance abuse and family break-downs, and all carried over to the next generation - including mine.
    Margaret  and mum's story is a reflection of a patriarchal society which blamed women for societies ills, especially for having children out of wedlock. In a time of little contraception, the pill a long way off, the need for working class women to work, especially as part of the war-effort - many unwanted pregnancies occured.
    Women would be forced to have illegal, dangerous abortions or go to an unwed mothers home to have the baby, who would then be adopted or more frequently transferred to one of the big orphanages. The Child Migration Scheme,  the name given to the policy and action of child transportation had been going on for almost 350 years(Melville/Bean, 1989).
    As with its convicts Britain found a way to get rid of its unwanted children in collaboration with its old colonies, still part of the Commonwealth, and the religious and child care agencies. The contempt which these children experienced is still felt today, similar to that experienced by 'The Stolen Generations" of Australia's indigenous people.

    Education was not a priority in the history of this scheme. Margaret and Mum were trained for domestic and farm labour by being forced at a young age to be up at dawn to milk the cows, iron the heavy black pleated nuns skirts, scrubbing and polishing and even guard the dead. Margaret said how every time someone died Sr. Rita assigned girls to kneel and pray around the coffin all night long.
    There was a constant battle of wills but hunger and torture were part of every day life and Mother Superior always won in the end.
    Common punishments and methods to break the spirit of the children were to put you in a sugar sack and lock you in isolation without food, dressing you in red cloth and placing you in a field with a bull, and if you dared pluck your eyebrows like mum did, have all your hair hacked off in front of everybody and smear your brow with gentian violet.

    Not all nuns were cruel of course,(bless you Sister Ruth), and mum said they did get to see a movie occassionally like Tyrone Power, in the Mark of Zorro, and she loved to sing. They even got to sing on an Albury radio station, but mostly it was work, and when you turned eleven you got sent out to a cattle or sheep station to help the farmers wives with the house and kids.
    I always felt a sense of trajedy growing into my teens that mum had never had the chance to go to a proper school full-time because she showed a love of reading and maths. It was like I could always see her potential and felt sad that it wouldn't be fulfilled, because she didn't believe in herself that much; she was a factory worker, a cleaner, a cook, a bar-maid and that was all she was destined for. She thought that about her daughters too and encouraged us out of school early and into the factories too.

    However, there were some significant differences in Mums and Margarets childhood: Margaret said she was raped at the orphanage, became pregnant and sent away to have the baby and put it up for adoption. It had only been recently that her son had found her and they were developing a relationship.

    The desire to know your origins is at the core of many of us. In the late 1960's, with the aid of the Salvation Army, Margaret found out she had a family in Ireland including a 'full-bloodied' brother. Saving the money from her various cleaning and ironing jobs she returned to Britain to find out who she belonged to.
    When she arrived at Heathrow Airport, London she was unprepared for the reception she received, "You should have seen them at the airport. There was a bus load of them! Holy Moley - they'd all come over from Ireland, all in their Gypsy gear...Oh, what an embarrassment! And Uncle Louie, he had the violin going," she laughs.
    They all "broke down" as they told Margaret she was the "spit-in-image" of her dead mother. She says, "My Grandmother had put me on that boat because I was a disgrace to the family over there...they(the family) didn't know I existed. She never told them."

    The greatest shock came when she found out her natural father was alive and went to visit him at the Repatriation Hospital in Dover: "Oh he was all battered up - he had a patch over one eye, half his ear missing...he thought I was the ghost of my mother coming in to take him upstairs!"
    Margaret's father said he had wanted to marry her mother but he couldn't "tie her down". When her mother did marry eventually to another man she did well, but Margaret adds, "She was a naughty girl for a long time".
    Still she didn't let her Grandmother forget her part in abandoning her and keeping the fact a secret, calling her a hypocrite to her face: "She had Our Lady standing in the window with two vases at her feet with little flowers. I asked her if she was praying to the Lord now, that He's gonna forgive her before she snuffed it!"

    Even after the big going away party and the sense of knowing where she came from, Margaret couldn't wait to return to Australia. She has mixed feelings about how her life turned out. Although bitter about the Catholic Church and the government for what they did to her, she's also glad she didn't grow up with her natural family: "We all got on well but they're so clicky...and you've got to watch your purse with them all the time!"
    As Margaret sits in a small, run-down weatherboard house opposite the Albury railway line, snatching a glance at her trophy she insists she is at Home: "When you look at the poverty, the shit they live in - at least I'm walking around here somewhere - y'know, a little bit better class than they are."

    Reference: FORGOTTEN AUSTRALIANS - A Report on Australians who experienced institutionalised or out-of-home care as children - Community Affairs References Committee, Aug 2004 www.aph.gov.au/senate_ca

    http://www.childmigrantstrust.com

    http://www.forgottenaustralians.org.au

     

     

     




    5:57 PM | Add a comment | Permalink | Blog it | CHILD MIGRANT HERSTORIES
    February 11

    VOCATIONAL PROSPECTS

    2007 - New year = new job? Signed up to www.linkme.com.au/ 

    for job readiness and search plus some savvy employer may spot my talent!

    Fresh views on work life

    A day in the life of

    Follow LinkMe member, Julie's fascinating work life journey. As a LinkMe member, you can also create your own "work diary blog" and attach it to your LinkMe resume giving employers and recruiters deeper insight to your work personality.
    Read Julie's story


    Learning blocks and bodily fluids

    LinkMe member, Julie continues this week offering some food for thought on learning and the rather fascinating world of infection control.
    Read more here

    9:22 AM | Add a comment | Permalink | Blog it | Organizations
    February 05

    GENERATION GAP

    THE GENERATION GAP

    Nan, I'm calling. Recalling to you,

    Watching me being born at the QE2

    Where you cleaned, when word passed

    Down that Kath was in the labour ward.

    You were the first to see me emerge,

    And mum said I had a big head

    ("Nothing much has changed" she said).

    You had me in the kitchen sink at five;

    Washing me, scrubbing at the dirt on me

    When mum was away

    Convalescing from a hysterectomy.

    You fed me with Sunday dinners, leaving them

    At the back door to cool, filled me with

    Hearty nourishment on school days, then

    Alex's fish, chips and mushy peas on Fridays.

    In the ambulance, you came with mum because

    You heard I was hurt at the park and no-one

    Knew where Dad was.

    In the dark I ran up to your house

    And cried I was afraid because Dad

    Was on our phone talking to a woman

    That didn't sound right.

    You took me with you on holidays with Auntie Nellie,

    To Broadstairs and Margate bed & breakfast,

    And it never rained.

    On the eve of your birthday in 1978

    You wept, hating to think Fate had swept us up,

    So that under Australian skies your great -

    Grandchildren would be born without you being around.

     

    (c)copyright, Julie McNeill Feb 2006

    all rights reserved

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

    9:16 AM | Add a comment | Permalink | Blog it | FAMILY HERSTORY
    January 22

    Freedom of, and Freedom from Religion

    INSIGHT ON SECULARISM AND THE ROLE OF RELIGION ON OUR LEGISLATION

    Monday 22nd January, 2007 - Ipswich North&Suburbs branch meeting.

    Discussion facilitator, Julie McNeill.

     

    With the increasing influence and public monies going towards religious organisations for provision of health and welfare services to the general public, I - as a free thinker - would like us to reflect, research and discuss the role that religions ought to have on our evolution as a secular society.

    It is vital that the Australian Labor Party be clear about this in relation to the messages, policies and programs we present to Australia at the next election. The separation of State and Church is seen as a fundamental key to maintaining a cohesive, inclusive and progressive society.

     

    Points to consider:

    1. Australian Constitution: Henry Higgins(Lawyer, committed Secularist and public campaigner against compulsory Religious Education in State Schools(1900) recognised the need to have Freedom of, and Freedom from, Religion. He was instrumental in putting into our Constitution that

    116. The Commonwealth shall not make any law for establishing any religion, or for imposing any religious observance, or for prohibiting the free exercise of any religion, and no religious test shall be required as a qualification for any office or public trust under the Commonwealth.

    Justice Lionel Murphy stated that

    Section 116 contained a great right, and ‘great rights’, are often expressed in simple phrases. ‘It would detract greatly from the freedom of and from religion guaranteed by those clauses if they were to be read narrowly.’ To interpret this section as prohibiting only the establishment of a single religion is to mis-read it: the section refers to the establishment of any religion. It works thus as a guarantee of freedom from religion, as well as of religion.

    2. Life & Death and everything in between. THE ROLE OF GENDER POLITICS - THE PERSONAL IS STILL POLITCAL

    I've had a fair share of my personal views and experiences covered in the local papers lately, in relation to the increasing trend of the Howard Government to throw money to religious organisations for public welfare and health services, eg. chaplains in state schools, pregnancy counselling, buying/running public hospitals with religious doctrine as policy. I am passionate about this issue because the effect on our lives of religious beliefs has and can impact on our experience of suffering and achieving our potential as human beings.(Consider the millions of victims of HIV in SE Asia and the Pacific, Africa whose Church will not promote the use of condoms).

    There is always the contest of ideas, but what the guiding principles of secularism does is promote the integrity of each man and woman to take responsibility and to use the knowledge and evidence of Science for our best interests. As a woman I will gather the facts and make the decision about what is best for me in particular to my body in life, unto death. Feelings aren't facts, so my spiritual side is that side of the brain which is stimulated by a sense of oneness and the kalaidescope of imagination that creates and finds beauty. I wrote a poetry performance show in Melbourne which described the sacred joy and wonder of conceiving a child, but I also intuitively knew when I couldn't bare another. No man can dictate to me because of his interpretation of an ancient text I respect - but don't believe in myself.

    For 200 years in the Black Country my grandmothers followed their men with their barrows full of kids from mine to mine till menopause set in. In 1847 my Great Great Great Grandmother Ann Brothwood was in the Wolverhampton Union Poor House and made to wear a special mark on her uniform to show she was a wicked unwed mother.

    In 1938 my nan gave birth to a baby girl whilst in domestic service so my grandparents bought the child up as their own and nobody knew of her shame untill 1982. My nan got married to a Higgins, whose Irish parents had dropped the O' so nobody would discriminate against them, so by the time my dad grew up in the 1950's he was full of the Protestant British Empire who couldn't trust the lazy Paddies, not realising until I told him his roots were from Ireland, and he vilified his own!

    In 1941 my mother was born in Father Hudsons Home and told she didn't belong to anybody. Even God rejected her because she was a bastard ' even to the 10th generation' (Deuteronomy), but the Church, then shipped her out to New South Wales to be trained for domestic labour. The long term effects of such treatment by Church and State I submitted to the Senate Enquiry reports of the Forgotten Australians.

    Enough about me! What about you? share your views and thoughts on the subject...

    3. WHERE TO FROM HERE? How does the Branch collectively view the role of religion on our legislation and policies that provide for the public good? Shall we prepare a motion to go to State Office?

     

    Julie McNeill - Fernvale

     

    blog 2: I am so promiscuous I also have a myspace where I keep in touch with FRIENDS, FAMILY and other familiars, so have a geek, join us at 

    www.blog.myspace.com/jewelsescape

     

     

     

     

     

     

    4:55 PM | Add a comment | Permalink | Blog it | News and politics
    December 31

    BROWN FALCON


    BROWN FALCON

    We didn't win a portion of the 33million dollars in 'lotto -

    That weekly re-distribution of wealth that would have built

    Us our own Nursing home:

    Do not apply - grumpy workers, bullies, perfectionists

    Or Christians who can't tolerate surfy sufis, old hippies who

    Prefer to walk bare feet singing about

    George Harrison's Sweet Lord.


    'Happy Hour' is more than Friday tea-times, as each hour

    They've got left, reflects on a life well spent,

    New to old age, some with a gentle smoke

    Out in the herb garden, taking in the greenery

    Like we have right now,

    When, out of the blue, a masterful bird of prey

    Can drop in, flap its wings brown feathered

    Into our lunch-time, turn like a corkscrew to land

    On a branch and eat its reptilian find.

    My sandwich crust fallen from lips amazed

    Making sure this living scenery is super-glued

    To the memory, to pass many musing minutes

    Or meditation at a dentist visit.


    I say to my Green Man: You did this! You created a forest

    Of Blue Quandong, Silky Oak and Queensland Maple

    So a Brown Falcon can find a protective place to

    Enjoy a feed to keep its wild strength up

    Without the prying pirate crows.

    Swiftly it rises above so that all I can see is

    Its shadow spanned across the pools flat screen

    Gliding around three or four times and

    It is gone...

    Left to sit and wonder about the richness

    We experience without living life only to win,

    Listening to Mick singing wiser than his years,

    From our youth:

    You can't always get what you want...

    But you just might find, you get what you need...oh yeah, honey.

     

    (c)copyright Julie McNeill Dec. 2006

    all rights reserved

     

     

     

     

    5:17 PM | Add a comment | Permalink | Blog it | Poems
    December 27

    Talking about Coalminers daughters

     

    Quote

    Coalminers daughters
    Outside my door the cockatoos shriek, the lizards chase around the verandah and I sit and sweat at my laptop in a virtual reality of eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth century Black country, coal digging lives of my ancestors.
     
    I've come back from the Australian Labor Party Queensland Branch Members Conference urging policy makers to keep the Coal and Uranium in the ground and invest in renewable energy.
     
    Global Warming is an "inconvenient truth" as Al Gore says, especially for the Queensland Coal Mine stakeholders, and our Labor Premier, Peter Beattie with his hard hat on. Before long I am settled in my old Colonial Queenslander and digging through the archives on-line, a couple of branches of my Nan's family - the Brothwoods and Gardners of Staffordshire who laboured long and hard, supporting their children from the beginning to the end of Britains Industrial Revolution.
     
    I started my family research with Nan as she recenlty died. On my return to the 'Mother Country' to see her before she died she was glad to pass on family names, knowing how interested I was in geneology. In English history all students learned was the Monarchial family trees and battles to retain them. 

    With Australian Republican principles,  I wasn't looking for aristocratic genes as though that would make one a superior being, but I did want want to place our  clan stories in the context of human history. What was the part we played? I found it was not insignificant.
     
    Each day on the internet I'd discover a new link to the Brothwood time line, with immense gratitude to the people who have worked to put all this information on the web, to make it accessible. It was easier too, as I found that on the surname place project, Brothwoods had their origin in Shropshire but spent the next 150 years in Staffordshire a hop, skip and jump over the border from The Wrekin.
     
    Having recently  worked as an Australian Census collector it was wonderful to see the work of those before me, ennabling me to follow a family story: putting the dates and names together like a jigsaw.
     
    In the process I also linked up with two cousins I didn't know existed by the geneology sites that link common names from members trees. They both live in the Midlands and I have said we will have to have a drink in Cannock, Staffordshire where we spring from - as my husbands long service leave makes the trip viable, (and before P.M. Howard slashes those rights for workers fought for over a hundred years).

    New cousin Dave on my matrilineal line confirmed the census material with a marriage certificate of my Nan's parents,
    William and Sarah Jane Brothwood(nee Gardner). They obviously met in Derbyshire, because their fathers were working at the Colliery there at the time of the 1901 Census. 
     
    I first met my great great grandfather when he was one year old in the 1881 Cenus, born in Nuneaton Warwickshire, specifically in Pit Row 71 Colliery School Rd of Denaby, Yorkshire.
     
    His mum was called Sarah too, age 23 and it occurred to me what life was like for a woman, bearing children right through to menopause, travelling around from mine to mine -and why was her husband, Edward moving from job to job?
     
    My great great grandfather Edward drew my admiration when I ordered his birth certificate with the touch of a button and a seven pound credit card transaction, finding that in 1847 he was born in the Wolverhampton Union Poor House to his unwed mum, Ann Brothwood.
     
    The reason why I felt this for Mother and child was when I researched all about Wolverhampton and the history of the Poor Laws. Was Ann kicked out by her Dad and have to wear a yellow badge for being an unmarried,pregnant women?
     
    Not only did they manage to survive the Cholera Outbreak, but they got work and thrived, so by the 1871 Census, Ann Brothwood was Head of a household in Wolverhampton.
     
    Ann's parents meanwhile show up with an empty nest in the 1851 Census in Wolverhampton, so is likely her dad kicked her out to go in the poor house when she was pregnant.
     
    I cheer her on from my time-travelling  chair. What a strong woman she must have been, and I can see her at age 42yrs in 1871, with Edward at home age 22 and other children called Brothwood too - but question is, who do they belong to, as she wears her single status to the Census collector and theres a man her age who could be her partner, though it says he's her  lodger!
     
    I haven't watched television for weeks...Who needs to watch 'Neighbours' when my imagination thrives on knowledge shared and passed on from previous generations. All those BBC dramas I grew up with from the stories of Charles Dickens and George Eliot, and tales of monarchial power plays -  yet whilst Bonnie Prince Charlie's faithful Scots men were marching down to London, my ancestors were down pit, keeping their heads down, making money for their Coalmasters, and providing for their families.
     
    Many family historians go looking for traces of Royal blood in their pedigree, but it seems I'll have to go to a clairvoyant to tell me that I was the 'Queen of Sheba' in one of my past lives! All I know is the more I research, the more I discover and it is a joy to learn.
     
    The Brothwoods, the Gardners and the Duces may not have been famous or infamous, but they were solid hard working people who were the heart and soul of Britains economic fortune and progress.
     
    Their time is over now and I use my technological tool to search and muse and meet cousins from across the globe in cyberspace. Its on my agenda to have a gathering of the clan in a Cannock hotel sometime in the near future.
     
    That's one branch of the story anyway! Then there's the Irish. What will I find there? Now I know why I felt at home in Ipswich so much, old coal mining heritage and lots of short, working class people who say hello and smile in lifts and appreciate the industry that got them to the present, no matter how hard the task was. They know what it is like at the coal face because their grandparents told them, but now its time to keep that fuel in the ground and petition parliament for a tax on carbon and invest in solar, and bring the current government down for taking us back to low wages and 12 hour days.
     
     
     
    Julie McNeill
    Puppeteer/Writer
    Queensland, Australia
     
     
    12:43 PM | Add a comment | Permalink | Blog it | FAMILY HERSTORY
    December 26

    WANDERING BACK TO WOLVERHAMPTON

    WANDERING BACK TO WOLVERHAMPTON

    - or the Churm ghosts of Christmas past-

    The cradle of the Industrial Revolution was in Shropshire, England, as it was for the baby boy, born and baptised RICHARD CHURM in October 1753 in a little hamlet called Childs Ercall. Another baby boy called JOHN BROTHWOOD was also born near The Wrekin at Wrockwardine. Both lads were to grow up and father a long line of COAL MINERS and be great great great great great grandfathers to Roy and Julie(who would meet and marry up in Australia 200 years later, not fully realising how much they had in common!).

    RICHARD CHURM and his wife ANN NOCK crossed the border into Staffordshire, so that their son THOMAS CHURM was born in 1789 where he would work, marry and be buried, along with his wife ANN BAKER to the ripe old age of 82years. It must have been the rural setting; Bushbury and Essington townships two miles North of Wolverhampton was a district of "scattered houses, partly occupied by colliers" but by 1851 the coal mines were exhausted.

    Going to where the next working coal mine is may not have been far to us, but in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries a family was wealthy if they had a horse and cart. Their son, SAMUEL CHURM, Roy's , great grandfather was born in 1817 closer in to the Cannock seam, at Cheslyn Hay. MARY ANN POOLE was born in the next suburb of Willenhall in 1818 and they met and married on 31 March 1841.

    The children they produced were JAMES(1842), WILLIAM(1843), SAMUEL(1845), PHOEBE(1846), EMMA(1848), JOSEPH(1850), SARAH ANN(1852) and LUCY(1856). It is with the birth of JOSEPH CHURM we are to follow, as this man marries another Wolverhampton worker called BETSY COOPER and in 1873 she gives birth to Roy's grandad, JAMES at Bilston, Wolverhampton.

    My mother-in-law Nancy and her sister Joyce who emigrated to Melbourne, Australia in 1964 from Leeds, Yorkshire, didn't know much of their father's background or family, although when I first visited Roys folks house in Highett and Nancy asked where I was originally from she gasped: Birmingham, she said, was where she thought the fairies were from, as they were the stories her dad would tell when she was a little girl!

    Most likely those tales from the West Midlands were passed on to JAMES from his father JOSEPH, and mother BETSY who decided to leave Wolverhampton in 1875 to a Yorkshire coal mine when James was two years old.

    The parents were in their mid-twenties. With two sons, Joseph and James and according to the 1881 Census, Betsy's mother, ELIZABETH COOPER 66years old and a widow, travels with them. Although the coming of the railways and passenger train services could be found at Wolverhampton by 1837, for many working or unemployed folk walking, horse and cart would have been likely. However long the journney, they find accommodation at 47 Terry's Row, Castleford, Whitwood, nr Pontefract, Yorkshire.

    Ten years later at the next Census of 1891, the mother-in-law must have passed on, but the family has grown and moved up to more suitable premises at 56 Terry's Lane.....JOSEPH AND BETSY CHURM have turned 40years. They have seven sons and four daughters: Joseph age 20, JAMES 18, William, 16, and Samuel 14. They are working with their father at the coal mine, the younger ones as drivers of the coal carts to the coal hewers; "Coal miners Pony Driver Underground".

    The younger ones are getting some school work in, AMELIA age 13, ELIZABETH 11yrs, THOMAS 9, and the twins, DAVID & ISAAC are six. MARY ANN who is 3 years and MINNIE who is 1 stay with Mum!

    As they lived in four rooms there would have had to be a lot of negotiation, compromise and planning.....and electricity a distant dream. To accommodate the changes in the family, by 1901 they have moved to 12 back of Lumley St.

    JAMES CHURM is 29years and still living at home. His younger brother William has married and moved next door with his wife HELEN ELIZABETH and their daughter LUCY who is three and new baby WILLIAM MARTIN CHURM.

    Bringing the coal up from underground fed our families and the Industrial Revolution for 200 years. For JAMES, an enforced job change would come when the son of the mine-owner took charge and looking round for men to sack, saw fortysomething JAMES with a bald head and said he was obviously too old to go down pit anymore. Maybe the Union wasn't too strong there, but either way it made the ex-coalminer go to the big smoke of LEEDS, marry SARAH ELIZABETH ROBSON and bear him three hard-working lassies, BESSIE, NANCY & JOYCE CHURM.

    He was unemployed for a long time says Auntie Joyce, but by the start of WW11 he had found a job as a Nightwatchman, and was present at his daughter Nancy's wedding to Archibald McNeill in 1943, but not to Joyces in 1948. 

    "Our dad was deaf in one ear and so didn't hear the truck backing out of the driveway he was crossing", said Roys mum(1923-2004).

    Though my husband didn't know his Grandad Churm there is a pride in knowing you come from a Coal Miners family, and now I have learned that the nice working-class lad who I married 22 years ago had a branch of Churms who were down pit at the same time as a branch of Brothwoods from my Grandmothers side... digging, and wandering around Wolverhampton, and likely having a jar or two in a local inn together!

     

    by

    Julie McNeill(nee Higgins)

    Christmas Eve 2006

    Summary to date

    JAMES CHURM, born Bilston, Wolverhampton, Staffordshire 1873. Died Leeds, Yorkshire c.1944 Occupation: Coal Miner/Nightwatchman - married to Sarah Elizabeth Robson born June 1884 Yorkshire.

    JOSEPH CHURM, born Bilston, Wolverhampton, Staff. 1850. Died Castleford, Whitwood, Yorkshire Occupation: Coal Miner - married to Bestsy Cooper born 1851 Willenhall, Wolverhampton, Staffordshire

    SAMUEL CHURM, born Cheslyn Hay, Cannock, Wolverhampton, Staffordshire 1817. Died 1855 Willenhall, Staff. Occupation: Coal Miner - married to Mary Ann Poole born 1818 Willenhall, Wolverhampton, Staff.

    THOMAS CHURM, born 1789 Essington, Wolverhampton, Staffordshire. Died 1871 Bushbury, Wolverhampton, Staff. Occupation: Labourer - married to Ann Baker born 1787 Highworks, Berkshire.

    RICHARD CHURM born 1753 Childs Ercall, Shropshire. Died 1836 Essingtonwood, Wolverhampton, Staffordshire - Occupation - Labourer - married to Ann Nock.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

    10:22 AM | Add a comment | Read comments (2) | Permalink | Blog it | FAMILY HERSTORY
    December 24

    CHRISTMAS SPIRIT

     

     

    THE FOUR STAGES OF LIFE : 

     

      * You believe in Santa

     

                       * You don't believe in Santa Claus

     

             * You become Santa Claus

     

               * You look like Santa Claus

     

    Wishing You a Ho Ho Ho

    And a Merry jig

    With  hearty family fare

    To set you up with Love and

    Blessings for the New Year!

     

    Love Julie & Roy & familyxxxxxx

     

     

     

    7:24 AM | Add a comment | Permalink | Blog it | Entertainment
    December 04

    THE SECRET BALLOT - Confessions of a Brownie Guide

    1.45am 3/12/06

    Confessions of a Brownie Guide

     

    I could easily step out, through the fly screen where the ebony luscent beetles are belting themselves against the kitchen light, lay my hands on the verandah beam and howl, but I'd wake the neighbours, set the dog off and probably my husband who has to be up at 5am for a 6-2 shift.

    I'd howl like a 'Woman who Runs with the Wolves' in the Brisbane Valley balmy air, then laugh outrageously, but as I do when I watch a bloody funny comedy there is a rush of cathartic release and the physical and emotional pain hits me with force and I end up tragically crying uncontrollably, generations of tears.

    If I was a drunk, Billy Holiday would be my companion. As I soaked in her voice from ages ago I'd consume most of a packet of menthol cigarettes, wishing the night away, and weep, then laugh once again at life's absurdity, drifting into a wallowing self-pity.

    Tonight though, I am cool as a continental cucumber, breathing in and out dangerous fumes of pain and pleasure, as if I am on some strange narcotic that could have me hallucinating supernaturally heavenly experiences through my senses or if I lose control, a descent into hell.

    In the first, clinically recorded psychosis, the psychiatrist described me as histrionic; to be precise, the notes read, "displays histrionic traits". Darling, Moi? Where did they come from and why did I never pass all those auditions? What a wasted talent! Freedom of Information allowed me to be enlightened as to my "fatuous" verbiage; add some insight into my internal disorder and an increase to my vocabulary.

    According to an astrologer, it was Mars in Leo making me an exhibitionist, so it is very likely that this tract won't remain in my diary as it will be released on a journey to my new psychiatrist so he can get to know me better, because he ought to...and then I'll scribe it onto my blog. I hate to admit I could be a Narcissist, but I can see their point because right now I have an inkling this could be easily turned into a performance piece where I bare all before an audience, like I've done before. It's not long before a reality alert pops-up, reminding me of the cognitive mishaps that occur as my body and mind close down after a short burst of social engagement.

    This weeked there is a leadership spill of the Australian Labor Party so I knew it would be a stimulating branch break-up! I did experience a slight cultural shock within a short time of our social intercourse as my husband and I discovered that most members were practicing Roman Catholics. Like many Poms, the Irish is strong in the genes and the other half is keep your head down and be baptised C of E just in case. Most of my friends over the years have been lapsed Catholics, mainly because they were outcast for adolescent misbehaviour and couldn't be constrained. These were the best mentors and friends of my life; creative, strong, compassionate and in my mind, Divine to the core.

    If I was raised a Catholic I would be harassing a Priest, rather than a Psyciatrist! Unable to keep to a monthly confession I'd be devoutly attending Our Ladie's Chapel, lighting candles with my wishes. Next, would be to pop in a cubicle to tell the Cleric I had sinned yet again, articulate each dramatic detail to keep his attention. What I have been leading up to, I'd say, is to reveal a childhood story which has raised its ugly head recently as I have increased my political activism.

    All the middle-aged women along the trestles wore a gold crucifix, and to unstick me from my mesmerisation, and ennable communion with these loyal Labor folk I told how I grew up being the only Proddy family in a street of Irish Catholics. Even the Avon Lady thought mum was Irish and would bring my strident anti-Catholic mother, who was born and brought up by nuns in an orphanage, tiny bottles of holy water from Lourdes to bless herself with.

    The Priest would stop her in the street and ask why he hadn't seen her in Church, because he knew she had the look of the Irish; all Auburn hair, fair skin and freckles but mum didn't know her lineage. She found out her mother was Scottish, but now we know that was a quick trip over the Irish Sea. Mum often broke out into an Irish Pub song of course, but who doesn't? The lady from Leichhardt who admitted to an addiction to the Communion wine and having a deal with the priest to give her the leftovers from Sunday Mass was keen for me to start a sing-song. I would if I'd learned the words, so instead I captivated my comrades with the recollection of the time I took a phone call from a man who said he was going to throw a bomb through our front window, because he knew we were the I.R..A.

    I peeped through the net curtains and mum said, "Who is it?" and I replied that a man said we were the I.R.A. and was going to throw a bomb through our window!

    Mum was a warrior woman, but not political, as they were as trustworthy as priests, and in her usual "how dare they?" stance, got up from the chair, opened the front door, stepped up to the front gate and with her embarassing rumbling rave, dared any bleeder to come and threaten her home! It was all a hoax. We found out the bloke had the wrong number. The "Birmingham Evening Post" had a misprint - the police raid which found weapons and bomb making equipment, had been at the house opposite to the church hall where I went to Brownies. A man,was aged 26 from Exeter Rd. was arrested, not from number 26 which was our house. That was my first dealings with the press and how one slight mistake can change your life... or end it.

    Saint Wulstans Church hall was on the corner crossroads a few houses up, opposite the Cypriots fish 'n' chip shop. I was a committed and enthusiastic Brownie Guide from ages 7-10, and I hate to say now what I did back then; how I fixed the vote, but its time to 'fess up. It's been a long time since I've been reminded of that stain on my character! I still can't believe that such a bright child who had ran down the hill after an evening rehearsing as Mary for the Nativity, and been captured by the immense white light and love of Jesus at her garden gate, could also do such a corrupt thing as fix a secret ballot!

    There were six groups in our pack. I can't remember now, whether I was a Pixie, an Elf or a Gnome, but what I did want to be was leader. Brown Owl asked us to put ourselves forward if we had the qualities to lead and I didn't hesitate. Surprising was the fact another girl was going to compete. With swift efficiency I swept the folded papers into the tin and announced I would go and count the ballot. Nobody challenged me as I marched through the swing doors into the kitchen as though this was the way things were done, but there I discovered I hadn't won!

    I obviously knew better than those girls. In a moment I had decided to steal two of my opponents votes, stuffing them in my pocket until I could destroy the evidence of my treachery. I quickly replaced them with similar sheets of paper with my name upon them, folded fast and returned declaring myself the leader of the little brownie pack, and thanked them. I lay the papers out to show everybody the six votes to four or whatever and picked them up before anybody noticed the fraud and threw them in the bin, suggesting we set up our table for the badge activities we were doing.

    I'm shaking bare foot at my computer. How on earth could I have done such a thing, so young? After I had been sworn in and given my leaders badge I swore to myself I would never do such a bad thing again, then got on with organising, delegating, enjoying the creativity, responsibility and the attention from the women who ran the group, that I so admired and learned from. If they had ever found out what I had done... but they would be dead now... I swear, I reformed my own character and didn't cheat again ever, so why do I feel like I'm in Purgatory, thirty five years later?

     

     

    Julie McNeill (nee Higgins)

    (c)copyright December 2006

    all rights reserved

    2:38 PM | Add a comment | Read comments (1) | Permalink | Blog it | PSYCHIATRIC MATTERS
    November 28

    SKELETONS

    SKELETONS

     I DON'T TALK ABOUT RELIGION OR POLITICS

    said NAN,

    WHEN I TRIED TO MAKE CONVERSATION

    ABOUT HOW GREAT IT WAS

    NELSON MANDELA WAS FREE.

    EYES DOWN! OR YOU'LL MISS A NUMBER

    TO CALL OUT BINGO!

    DAD said BABBY!  DO YOU HAVE TO

    DRAG THE SKELETONS OUT OF THE WARDROBE?

    WISHING HE COULD STEP INTO A STATELY

    HOME THAT WAS HIS OWN,

    AS A GENTLEMAN

    IN Pride and Prejudice WOULD.

     THEY ALL SPOKE POLITELY,

    NO SHOUTING AND SWEARING, AND DIDN'T DISCUSS

    ILLIGITIMACY WITH THEIR DAUGHTERS, HE STATED

    WHILE DRIVING MY SISTER AND I

    TO A SHAKESPEARE PLAY,

    WHERE KIND WORDS OFT' SPOKE

    BETRAYAL AND TRAJEDY.

    WE LAUGHED AT DEAR DELUSIONAL ROMANTIC DAD

    AND YELLED - YEAH! AS LONG AS YOU WEREN'T A WOMAN,

    BLACK OR POOR ! AND HE TOLD US WE WATCHED TOO

    MUCH 'CHANNEL 4!'

    THEY'VE A LOT TO ANSWER FOR,

    SAID OUR FATHER,

    BEING PART TO BLAME

    FOR WHY BRITAIN WASN'T GREAT NO MORE!

    I AM SPEECHLESS IN THE CUSHY

    BACK SEAT OF HIS LATEST CAR,

    BUT WRITE A POEM LATER

    CALLED,

    NAN IS A SKELETON NOW

    HER BONES ARE ASH,

    HER NUMBER IS UP

    AND POLITICS AND RELIGION COUNT FOR NO WOMAN

    WHO HAD TO RUN FROM THE BLACK COUNTRY WITH A BABY INSIDE.

    NANS PARENTS STOOD BY AND COVERED HER SHAME

    IN BRUM, 1931, SO NO FOLK KNEW THE CHILD

    WAS CURSED BY DEUTERONOMY.

     I MUST TAKE AFTER MUM WHO THREW

    HER BIRTH DEED IN THE AIR FOR EVERYONE TO STARE

    AT THE EMPTY SPACE OF HER FATHERS NAME

    PRONOUNCING HE MUST HAVE BEEN

    A RED HAIRED CHINA MAN!

    NO SHAME, BUT HER FACE TURNED RED

    WHEN THE LOCAL PRIEST EASILY GUESSED

    HER CATHOLIC ROOTS AND

    PURSUED HER UP HEELEY RD

    ASKING WHY, FOR THE LOVE OF MARY

    SHE HADN'T BEEN SEEN IN CHURCH? SO

    THE REBELLIOUS BLOOD OF A CELTISH LASS

    BOILED, REPLIED THAT SHE'D MARRIED

    A PRODDY, MADE HER ESCAPE INTO THE BINGO HALL.

    LEFT WITH THE LEGACY OF

    BASTARD SECRETS

    SIBLINGS GET ON WITH THEIR OWN LIVES,

    KEEPING MUM, AND OCCUPY SPANISH LANDSCAPES,

    WHILE THIS GRAND-DAUGHTER

    KEEPS DIGGING TILL ANOTHER BONE STICKS

    OUT OF THE EARTH WITH THE ENERGY

    IT TOOK HER FOREFATHERS TO REACH FOR COAL.

    WITH DADS PROUD PROTESTANT WORK ETHIC I CONNECT HIM TO

    THE IRISH BRANCH SO CLOSE TO THE BONE;

    PAY - BACK FOR SNIPING AT MY

    SYMPATHY OF THE BIRMINGHAM SIX -

    ITS CHILDISH, I KNOW, THIS SPITTLE OF WORDS

    I DARE TO CONJURE FROM A RICH DEPOSIT,

    BUT LET US BE TRUE AND NOT DENY;

    REALLY FATHER, YOU DON'T HAVE TO WINCE

    EACH TIME I SEND ANOTHER POEM -

    I SAY,  GET THEM SKELETONS LOOSE AND DANCE

    THE DIRT AND MUCKY SOD OFF

    SO WE CAN SIT AROUND THE HEARTH

    AND RELATE A GOOD STORY

    WE CAN ALL REFLECT ON, AND DRINK TO THAT,

    ME OLD DAD, THE LOVE THAT MAKES ME BURST

    THE BUBBLE AND SING FOR ME SUPPER

    AND WATCH YOUR EYES ROLL OVER!

     

     

    Julie McNeill

    (c)copyright Sept.2006

    Fernvale, Qld

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

    5:34 AM | Add a comment | Permalink | Blog it | FAMILY HERSTORY
    November 20

    PERIOD PIECES

    whats it like to be a woman politician, giving a speech and then your period comes - based on a true story............................

    WAR

    Like Boadicea you bloodied those

    Young men from your flood of

    Womanhood, as they stood prepared

    For battle.

    Naive to the Mystery of two forces at work

    As a Clay more, double-edged sword

    Would sacrifice lambs for the

    Greater good -

    New layers of Blood and Bone

    Will shed so the Goddess soil of the Earth

    Is appeased.

    Since History began men

    Go to the slaughter and women nursed,

    Died for them without any medals.

    Even now, though the sign-up is lower

    The taste for red horror and adrenalin

    In danger is encouraged by virtual realities

    Where witless propaganda assures

    They'll be heroes, strengthening ideologies and

    Arms trading.

    To maintain her pitch, Thatcher on an all nighter

    With whiskey and soda plotting Falklands

    Victory with her Secretary will go

    Down in Herstory as good or better

    Than any man, female backbencher or

    Campaign director, with a mission to win

    Right or wrong.

    Did she bleed like you, looking into

    Those handsome fresh faces

    Under the unseen moon?

    No Sacred Heart showed itself in

    Her divinity - more like a Caesars.

    Female warriors wear the purple today

    Ask courageously for time out to deal with the leaks

    At monthly intervals and manage moods with

    Precision and the power of intuition.

    At home in the Nations Senate you are

    Keeping the bastards honest, Green and rational as

    Significant others try to push legislation to control every

    Womans health, wealth and influence past your

    Red chair.

    14/11/06

    (c)copyright Julie McNeill

     

     

    AT THE PEAK OF MY POWERS

    I was all ready to resign - whipped up(stressed)

    And Blood showed its laughing smear

    To halt me in my tracks of biological destiny.

    Those ovaries that egg on desire and

    Sex, and damn chemistry of hormones which

    Delivers a rampage of confusion, in my mind(because)

    I believe, I am certain, I am a Warrior

    Against Injustice against me,

    And I write and fight for the plight

    Of the children and their loved ones

    Stuck in refugee camps off - shore, in

    Detention - seeking asylum.

    Forget United Nations conventions, we

    'Fair- go' Australians lead the way, compassion

    Corrupted by fear of foreigners(xenophobia)

    We always do forget we'll keep repeating the same

    Mistakes till we learn, have another Blood sacrifice

    For the 'Greater good', the message

    Comes from on high.

    And so many believe them, who throw bombs

    As if they were rocks from Davids sling-shot.

    I'm all ready to quit my life on Earth,

    This losing battle of Joy versus Despair,

    Of wailing at the wall - gnashing my teeth

    Through the night.

    Then as Dawn birds sing, It becomes clear -

    I am Fool each moon cycle

    In an eternal card game, an archetypal

    Female upon the stage, putting on a

    Show to please, to provoke and

    Do the best I know!

    The screw does turn, awareness lightens like

    Luna's mood transitions and Death and Horror

    Is committed in somebody elses

    Theatre of War.

    It's 4am and I'm singing a song

    For the preservation of my vocation,

    To deliver us from Evil in the name

    Of the God/dess from the depths

    Of my Soul and genius of

    My Ovarian cycle!

     

    (26/7/06)

    (c)copyright Julie McNeill

     

     

     

     

    10:55 AM | Add a comment | Permalink | Blog it | MONUMENTAL POETRY
    November 18

    PROLOGUE: OF BASTARDS AND COAL MINERS

    JANUARY 13th 1999
     
     
    Waking to the sounds of crow, magpie and honeyeater, the realisation rose in me as I opened the curtains onto the majestic palm planted to dignify our Queenslander home, that twenty-one years ago today I arrived in Melbourne, Australia, after a long, but relaxed 'assisted passage', on Qantas flight 1.

    As a fourteen year old looking out of the incubator plane window, the metal wing shimmering and bouncing off jets of light, it felt like I was riding on the wings of angels. They were taking me to the country I had wished for as a small girl: to go to the country my mother dreamed of returning to, especially when she hung out the heavy sheets, or piles of clothes that she'd washed in the bathtub.

    She'd give them an extra squeeze with her cold ruddy hands and I would sit on my tricycle watching the water gush out, onto the concrete path my father had made up the middle of the garden. My mother talked about Australia, and I absorbed that vision of a sky so big, blue, light and clear with wide open spaces filled with sunshine to run in.

    Anything was better than being hemmed in by ceasless house chores on endlessly stagnant grey days. She said, time and time again, "At least you could hang the washing on the line and within five minutes it would all be dry! You didn't need to iron a thing, because the hot wind blew all the creases out for you," she said, pushing up the tall wooden prop.

    It wasn't a life of ease though. Like the fortnightly bed-sheet wash, my mothers life unfolded and folded away into the airing cupboard of my psyche. The hot windy Aussie sun may have made life easier, but the nuns insisted my mum and the other orphan charges from the "Mothercountry" had every "bleeding sheet ironed to perfection, including the hundreds of pleats on the big black skirts of the nuns habits...and there was hell to pay if you didn't," she said.

    Yes, my mum had survived a hard, merciless life. Her voice was never without pain, hurt, anger and torment, even when she threw back her auburn hair and laughed out loud with a mixture of defiance and delight. Even after all these years of chimerical communication between us, it becomes hard to distinquish between what is her and what is me, so possessed I am by her undead ghost.

    When I left home at sixteen her voice would re-surface through my pen.
    "Write my story," she whispered and wished.
    "No," said my step-father trying to push her out of the way, "she's going to write mine first!"
    "Bullshit, she is" answers mum, and my first poems and prose written on the peaceful but lonely bed of a school friends spare room, became a never-ending dance between us.
     
    1:06 PM | Add a comment | Permalink | Blog it | FAMILY HERSTORY
    November 11

    POPPIES

    IF WE FORGET TO LOVE
    (lessons in the peace process)
     
     
    If we forget to love,
    Our arteries will harden, and
    The river can't deliver us.
    If we forget to appreciate
    The good in another, they won't
    Talk to us: lives will be lost.

    If our memories are failing,
    Recover them by music, stories, painting -
    As re-vision makes us stronger.
    Trust time
    Make time,
    It is an angel.

    If we forget to drink in commemoration
    Our senses are superficial:
    We have forgotten what love is and
    That is a failure -
    Our trajedy.

    Trust Love
    Make Love,
    It is our Inspiration.



    love Julie
    xxx11/11
    4:53 PM | Add a comment | Permalink | Blog it | Poems

    ALL I KNOW

     

    A poem for Nans funeral
     

    All I know about you Nan

    Is you were born Elsie Brothwood

    So long ago in a different era

    Where Pride & Prejudice took place

    And human folly was a disgrace.

    In your case, there was a secret and

    Travelling to Birmingham for a new life

    You met your match in our Grand-dad - Albert,

    Champion games player who even

    Disabled with Parkinson cheered us kids with Cribbage

    And Draughts, whilst donned with apron

    You cooked a wholesome dinner.

    All I know is Elsie Higgins was married to Albert

    For the best, the worst and the ordinary.

    I looked up to you as a solid, secure woman who role-modelled

    Nurturing values; keeping the hearth warm, clean

    And tea-pot cosie and freshly brewed,

    Someone I could turn to always.

    You knew what was needed to fix childhood traumas,

    Took me along to respite to Broadstairs and

    Margate with Auntie Nellie,

    Beer and Bingo with jovial company

    Filled your Midland soul ,

    With rejuvenating bonhomie.

    All I know Nan, was you survived a short Death

    To see your grandchildren grow up, have babes

    Of their own, and you coped with separations

    And reckless behaviours as best as

    Any Matriarch knew how, considering,

    Naturally the mistakes of your own.

    But all I know is, I could make you laugh

    With a bit of tomfoolery and a silly grin,

    A touch of the outlandish spirit within, like

    Singing 'I've got a loverly bunch of coconuts'

    To a cherubic hymn!

    I tell my own children who are designing their way

    In life now, that Great Nanny Higgins was a young girls

    Hero; She struggled with all the issues and dilemmas,

    Was a working mother, bringing up healthy and strong

    Kids for the future of Nations.

    Here in Australia we held great respect

    For our grandmother; She was wise, she was good,

    Even though we were aware of her faults.

    Nan, all I know was you were there when

    I needed you most. That is all that mattered to me

    Now you have given up the ghost.

    I've missed you,

    I've loved you,

    I thank you for your blessings

    And pray that the sorrows you left behind

    Are swept away with forgiveness in mind.

     

     

     

    love Julie McNeill(nee Higgins)

    Queensland, Australia April 5th, 2005

    for Elsie Higgins(nee Brothwood)

    1910-2005

     

     

    1:43 PM | Add a comment | Permalink | Blog it | FAMILY HERSTORY